Moral science has two halves. There are the implications of thinking straight about fact and value (ideal theory) and there are the implications of not thinking straight. Ideal theory is the foundation, error theory the daily battle.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Full riddle answer: Why only 38 Memorial Groves?

For two years, the Memorial Project has publicized “40 Memorial Groves,” one for each of the murdered passengers and crew of Flight 93, as a central feature of the winning memorial design:

From Memorial Project’s 2006 pitch for approval of what was originally called the Crescent of Embrace design.

When controversy over the crescent shape and name arose, the name was even changed briefly to “40 Memorial Groves.” That lasted, I am guessing, until someone decided to actually count the Memorial Groves:

The crescent design contains only 38 Memorial Groves, not the advertised 40.

Notice that there is room for another grove at each end of the arc of 38. Architect Paul Murdoch could easily have upped the number to 40. Indeed, it looks like he deliberately left space for two more, in case somebody realizes that he is short and he is forced to put them in, yet he is choosing to leave them out. Why?

If you want the short answer, click here. For the full answer, read on.

Murdoch’s biggest challenge: how to build a terrorist memorial mosque that is nominally a memorial to 40 infidels, without tainting his mosque by actually honoring the 40 infidels

A person facing directly into Murdoch's giant crescent will be facing almost exactly at Mecca. That makes it a mihrab, the central feature around which every mosque is built. All the Bowl of Embrace redesign did was add some surrounding trees, but you can plant as may trees around a mosque as you want and it will still be a mosque.

A legitimate mosque cannot include any actual valorization of infidels. Traditional Islam is very serious about keeping infidels out of mosques. It is a death penalty crime for infidels to visit the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. Thus the trickiest challenge Murdoch faced in designing his terrorist memorial mosque was how to keep what was nominally a memorial to the passengers and crew of Flight 93 from actually honoring these 40 infidels. With the 44 translucent blocks inscribed along the flight path, Murdoch met this challenge brilliantly.

All of the 4 blocks that are NOT inscribed with the names of the murdered passengers and crew (4 being the number of terrorist hijackers), are placed symbolically in the Islamic heavens. The three that are inscribed with the 9/11 date are in the position of the star on an Islamic crescent and star flag, while the 44th block is at the upper crescent tip, commemorating the spot where the terrorists broke our circle and turned it into a giant Mecca oriented crescent.

In contrast, the 40 blocks inscribed with the names of the 40 infidels are further down the flight path, below the star on the Islamic flag. Symbolically, they are cast out of the Islamic heavens, which in Islamic terms means that they are damned. This symbolic damnation allows the infidel names to be inscribed without tainting the Islamic purity of the design, as seen by the al Qaeda monsters who are actually being memorialized.

I would rank this symbolic damnation of the 40 infidels as Murdoch’s most brilliant stroke of evil genius. Without solving this problem he could not proceed at all, and in order to solve it he comes up with his fundamental theme, using a crescent and star configuration to create a symbolic Islamic heavens that he can depict the infidels as symbolically cast out of. Figuring out how to symbolically condemn the 40 infidels is the crux of Murdoch's feat, and it goes to the most basic structure of his design.

19 times 2

In addition to the 40 glass blocks, the crescent design is supposed to memorialize the 40 heroes by placing "40 Memorial Groves" around the back of the giant crescent. This presents a real challenge for Murdoch's mosque design. Since the Memorial Groves are integral to the giant crescent, they are symbolically a part of the Islamic heavens. That means they cannot be used to represent the 40 infidels at all. Simply reducing the number to 38 would not solve anything if these were still representing 38 of the infidels. For Murdoch to create a legitimate mosque, the 38 groves have to represent believing Muslims. So who does Murdoch have in mind?

A line across the most obtruding tips of the crescent of Memorial Groves points pretty much exactly at the White House:

The White House sits just about at the middle of the “i” in “Washington” on this Yahoo map. It is used here as the Washington end of the superimposed Shanksville-to-Washington line. Yahoo’s red star marks downtown Shanksville. A line through the White House and the crash-site (depicted) turns out to have the same slope as a line across the tips of Murdoch’s crescent of Memorial Groves (129° clockwise from north).

Now you know why the crescent of Memorial Groves (unchanged in the Bowl of Embrace redesign) is not symmetrical with the full Crescent of Embrace. It has a different job to perform. The full crescent is gives the direction to Mecca. It is one of the many Islamic elements in the design. The fat part of the crescent gives the direction to the target that the terrorists were trying to destroy. It is one of the many terrorist memorializing elements in the design.

Take two groves away from the arc of 38 and a line across the tips of the remaining 36 will also point to the White House. Ditto for 34 groves, 32, etcetera, down to 2. That is one nested crescent for each of the 19 9/11 terrorists, each one aiming an arrow at our nation's capitol.

I have long thought that Murdoch was probably hiding a memorial to the full complement of 9/11 terrorists somewhere in his design. We see here that his doing so is actually crucial to his design. 40 Memorial groves would make for an illegitimate mosque. The Memorial Groves have to be dedicated to the terrorists for Murdoch's mosque design to work.

Why then does Murdoch even leave room for 40 groves, if avoiding 40 is so crucial to his intent? Because in terms of the ultimate Islamo-fascist goal of world domination, having to include 40 Memorial Groves now would not be a deal-breaker. It would just establish a jihadist goal of one day restoring the Crescent mosque to its intended configuration, free from infidel taint, much the way the jihadists champion re-possession of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem (the Dome of the Rock) as a motivation driving the Jews out of Israel.

This is why “fixing” the Memorial Grove count would not fix anything. The Memorial Project keeps looking for ways it can “tweak” Murdoch’s design in answer to various objections that arise. All they are doing is trying to help him improve his disguise so that he can get past gate security and proceed with his hijacking. The proper answer, when someone is caught trying to sneak an Islamo-fascist plot through gate security, is not to tell him to go back outside and try again. It is to cart him away.

A second set of 19 nested crescents

Murdoch always demonstrates intent by repeating his various Islamic and terrorist memorializing features. Is there another set of nested crescents in the planned memorial?

The Tower of Voices is surrounded by a vast array of nested crescents of trees. Count 'em. One for each 9/11 hijacker.

I noticed a long time ago that if I counted 2 trees together as a crescent, there were 19 nested crescents in the Tower array, but it seemed odd to count a pair of trees as a crescent arc. The discovery of the 19 Memorial Grove crescents, ranging in length from 2 to 38, settles the question of what is to count as a crescent of trees. No longer is the use of 2 trees as a crescent odd. It is instead a repeated theme, and the number of intended crescents in the Tower array comes definite.

Notice that the Tower array also includes four single trees, singling the four Flight 93 terrorists out for special recognition.

Only part of the Tower array represents the Islamic heavens.

The detail view of the Tower array shown above (from the Tower of Voices PDF) only shows the central part of the Tower array, extending out as far as the parking lot on the left. The Site-Plan PDF shows that out beyond the parking lot there are yet more arcs of trees:

Murdoch has used a very clever device to indicate that these additional arcs of trees are NOT part of the symbolic heavens. He does this by repeating the entire multi-Mecca oriented geometry of the giant central crescent in the Tower crescents. Since the central crescent represents the Islamic heavens, the part of the Tower crescents that corresponds to the geometry of the central crescent also represents the Islamic heavens.

In the central crescent, if you connect the most obtruding tips of the crescent structure and form the perpendicular bisector (the bisector of the crescent) it points 1.8° north of Mecca. But the upper tip of the central crescent also includes a slightly further out and more recessed crescent tip. Use that as the upper crescent tip, and the resulting bisector points exactly at Mecca. (See Crescent of Betrayal, download 2, chapter 3.) In the Tower of Voices part of the memorial, both of these Mecca orientations (one inexact, one exact) are represented.

A line across the most obtruding tips of the crescents of trees exactly replicates the inexact Mecca orientation of the central crescent:

Superimpose this overt orientation of the Tower crescents on the overt orientation of the central crescent and, ta-da:

Red and blue make purple. The orientations are identical, within the pixel resolution of the graphics. Both point 1.8° north of Mecca.

The Tower array also includes a hidden exact Mecca orientation, and it is created in the same way as it is created in the central crescent: by connecting to a second crescent tip that is slightly further out and more recessed than the most obtruding crescent tip:

Red line points 1.8° north of Mecca. Swinging in to the further out and more recessed crescent tip, the resulting black line points exactly at Mecca.

With the central crescent, it is the crescent bisectors that point to Mecca. With the Tower crescents, it is lines across the crescent tips themselves that point to Mecca. Otherwise the two geometries are identical. Rotate the central crescent 90° CCW and the two geometries overlay precisely:

Both structures combine a single crescent tip on the right with a pair of crescent tips on the left. In both, a line connecting the most obtruding crescent tips yield an orientation slightly north of Mecca (red). In both, a line to the further out and more recessed of the left hand crescent tips yield an orientation exactly on Mecca (black).

One thing Murdoch is doing here is proving intent. A lot of people might be willfully blind enough to think that the multi-Mecca oriented geometry of the central crescent is mere coincidence, but anyone who is willfully blind enough to think that the repetition of this entire multi-Mecca oriented geometry in the Tower crescents also a coincidence is certifiably insane. Surely this should constitute enough proof for Murdoch to be able to claim his victory, once he reveals what he has done, but Murdoch knows the willfull blindness of the American left well. He is never satisfied that he has included enough proof, and just keeps piling on additional repeated terrorist memorializing themes.

Proof of intent is only part of what Murdoch accomplishes by repeating his multi-Mecca oriented geometry in the Tower crescents. He is also indicating what parts of the Tower array correspond to the central crescent, and hence are to be seen as representing the Islamic heavens. These are just the parts included in the detail view of the Tower of Voices. The arc of trees that passes through the outer edge of the parking lot ends in the outer and more recessed crescent tip that gives the exact direction to Mecca. Thus the arcs of trees to the left of the parking lot lie symbolically outside of the Islamic heavens, which in Islamic terms signifies damnation.

40 trees lie outside of the Islamic heavens

Count the number of trees in the arcs of trees that lie to the left of the parking lot. It is hard to count accurately because the site plan image is low resolution when zoomed in on this one part of the plan, but it looks like there are 40 "condemned" trees:

Number of trees out beyond the arcs through the parking lot: seems to be 40.

If this tree count is correct, it matches the symbolic layout of the central crescent exactly, where the 40 translucent panels inscribed with the names of the murdered passengers and crew are outside of the Islamic crescent and star heavens, while the 4 additional inscribed translucent panels are all part of the crescent and star. In the Tower array, there are 19 nested crescents in the symbolic Islamic heavens, while 40 symbolically condemned trees are planted outside.

40 restless souls

There is one more place in the memorial where the 40 lives of the passengers and crew are represented: the 40 wind chimes that hang from the crescent shaped top of the crescent shaped Tower of Voices. Murdoch needs a way to interpret these 40 souls as cast down from the Islamic heavens, and seems to have done it very straight-forwardly. The forty represented souls will hang and twist in rain, wind and snow throughout the centuries, never to rest, ringing mournfully as the crescent towers in the sky above:

Conspiracy theory nuts and anti-conspiracy theory nuts: a note on the concept of evidence

For the defenders of the crescent design, each carefully arranged terrorist memorializing feature that I point out in the design is seen as yet more evidence that I have a fevered imagination. Instead of checking to see whether the things I am saying are true, they refuse to look at it seriously on the grounds that it would be crazy to think that such a thing could possibly be true. They are anti-conspiracy theory nuts, the same way that the “9/11 truth” morons are conspiracy theory nuts. Both look only at what supports their presumptions and simply refuse to account contrary reason and evidence.

Not a shred of the “9/11 truth” stupidity stands up to any scrutiny. Popular Mechanics magazine looked at the “truther” evidence that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by the Bush administration and every claim they looked at turned out to be based on the most transparent falsehoods. The “Loose Change” idiots do not even pretend they are being honest, but describe online how they went searching for statements they could edit out of context to create a fictional story about the Bush administration being behind 9/11. When leftist America haters started touting their fiction as real, they started selling it as real. (See Dylan Avery’s explanation, second from the top.)

Mainstream leftists do the same thing on their pet issues. The Clinton/Soros front group Media Matters has recently been making transparently phony charges against Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, using out-of-context quotes to present them as saying the opposite of what they actually said (the exact same thing Avery and his loose-marbles cohorts did to fabricate their “Bush did it” 9/11 narrative).

Media Matters knows that it is easier to make false claims than it is for their opponents to document the falsity of their claims, and they know that their media allies will report the charges but not their falsity, which to their way of thinking makes lying an effective strategy.

Demagogeury IS a powerful strategy, but a transparent one to anyone who actually checks the facts. Everyone who actually checks MY factual claims verifies them. The closest anyone has come to even contesting any of my factual claims is the Rasputin like Daniel Griffith, so-called expert consultant to the Families of Flight 93, who is telling every reporter who will listen that there is no such thing as the direction to Mecca.

Far from contesting my factual claims, I learned from Flight 93 Advisory Commission member Tim Baird that everyone on the Advisory Commission is fully aware that the giant crescent will in fact be oriented almost exactly on Mecca. Mr. Baird suggested further that everyone at the Project assumes the accuracy of ALL of my geometric claims, but are not concerned about any of it. As he explained his own view:

I won't be concerned unless you can prove intent, and it is impossible to prove intent.

Of course it is possible to prove intent, as Murdoch has done many times over, but set that aside. What Baird told me is not what the defenders of the crescent are telling the press. They are telling the public that my information is false, when they all know it is true, the same way the “Loose Change” idiots know that they are lying to the public. Both rationalize their blatant lying with their own excuses for why the truth does not matter.

The lesson of Flight 93 is that the truth is the ONLY thing that matters. Learning the truth from phone calls to the ground, they were able to spend their lives as dearly as any of us could hope, protecting out capitol and our national leadership from a potentially devastating strike. The opposite lesson is now being demonstrated by those who are charged with memorializing the heroes of Flight 93. By trying to avoid and suppress inconvenient truth, they twist all the way around to actively blocking for a hijacker who is again using Flight 93 to attack our nation, this time by stabbing a terrorist memorial mosque into America’s heartland.

It is going to be up to the rest of us to knock aside the blockers and tackle this hijacker. As Tom Burnett Sr. said of Tom Jr.: “He did something. Now I must do something.” And what could be more fun than to tackle a hijacker?

… gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

Alec: I salute your unflagging efforts and brilliant deductive/research skills. I've read most of the downloaded book today [computer-glare headache to prove it]; this latest addition to the massive pile of evidence would take the cake if that hadn't already been done by so many other facts you've presented...

I confess I had a hard time following all the info about the zig-zag tower-shadows past Nov 1st, was it, because I'd jumped to the conclusion that you were going to have found the deeper winter prayer-time 'shadow' to be the sunshine/slit line in the lower half of the tower - when it touched the edge of what looks to be a parabolic-shaped concrete slab at the base of the tower....

Would that work in a similar way? Based solely on the one overhead illustration, it sure LOOKS like those two things have some function.

Good eye Wholebrainer. The bottom slot will have a role to play, I am certain, in the fully detailed design. It will give the time for noon prayers, which commence when a gnomon's shadow reaches its shortest length. Since this occurs at mid-day, there will always be light passing through the slots in the Tower at the time for noon prayers, enabling the bottom slot to function as a negative version of a typical gnomon. The time of shortest shadow will correspond to the time when the strip of light through the bottom slot is shortest.

The noon prayer line that tells viewers when the time of shortest shadow has been reached will have to be built into the concrete slab that forms the Tower's base. If you look at the photo of the Islamic sundial, the inner curved vertical is the noon prayer line. I presume that when the construction drawing are complete, there will be some kind of decorative figure in the concrete that will include this line.

Thanks for pointing out the possible confusion in my explanation. I should make sure it is clear, in my discussion of the zig-zag afternoon prayer line, that it is the slot at the TOP of the tower that creates the zig-zag. The slot at the bottom has a different role, giving the time for noon prayers. I do not mention the noon prayer line in the book because at this point it is still speculative. I don't yet have the construction drawings for the slab, where I am expecting the noon prayer line to appear.

Murdoch's motive for including terrorist memorializing features is to create a memorial to the terrorists. The motive of those who chose Murdoch's design that is more mysterious. They did not know about the various hidden terrorist memorializing features in the design, but they all knew that they were choosing an Islamic symbol shape for the the shape of the memorial, and 9 of 15 jurors still chose it, with Tom Burnett Sr. being the only person on the jury to protest vehemently about the crescent design.

8 of the 15 jurors were design professionals and seven were family memembers. I would like to see the vote tally (as Tom Burnett has requested), broken down at least between the design professionals (who are all leftists) and the family members. I would not be surprised if it was 8 design professionals and one family memember voting for the crescent.

This is possibly off-topic, possibly not. You probably know there is evidence of an Islamic aspect to the Murrah building bombing in OKC. I was checking the aerial view of the memorial to the Murrah bombing - and I noticed that on the NE section of the area, there is a crescent-shaped low wall, with a tree planted inside the arc, near the opening.

From using Google Earth to draw lines (great-circle route) from the OKC memorial to Mecca, the line would pass through the opening of the crescent, though on the left, not directly in center of the opening. However, a line from the OKC to the World Trade Center, would also pass through the opening, on the right. Ditto for a line drawn to the Pentagon from the OKC memorial crescent. AND – I noticed there seems to be 7 steps (grass, with concrete border) leading from the reflecting-pool level up to the crescent level. Possibly refer to the 7 pillars of Islam?

And there are 19 ‘spots’ on the concrete north of the pool, to the west of the crescent. Don’t know if that represents the 19th day of April, 1995, or possibly an ironic forecast of 9/11’s hijackers? Look at the many clear ‘chairs’ in the memorial, with the bronze tops. The tops have two columns going up from the seat, to the top where they are joined. The proportions of the chair columns is almost the same as the WTC buildings. Ironically, the second of the two portals on the pool, has the time 9:03 inscribed on it – the time the second plane hit the WTC, according to Wikipedia.

Maybe just coincidence, but someone may want to investigate it a bit more.

Lee: I'd be interested to see what 19 "spots" you are talking about. It might seem anachronistic to think that there could have been any Islamic meaning to the number "19" in the years before 19 hijackers committed the 9/11 attacks, but in fact the 9/11 hijackers picked the number 19 BECAUSE it has Islamic significance, being mentioned in the Koran as a special number.

the 'islamic' crescent u so call it is not 'islamic'!!! n muslims do not accept a 'cresecent' to represent islam!

the cresent in ancient Pagan religion symbolizes Goddess "Allat".

from wikipedia:

Allat may refer to two Ancient Near Eastern goddesses:

* Allāt or Al-Lāt, a pre-Islamic Arabian goddess, identified with Aphrodite and considered a daughter of Allah.* especially in older sources, Allat is an alternative name of the Mesopotamian goddess of the underworld, now usually known as Ereshkigal. She was reportedly also wenerated in Carthage under the name Allatu.

unfortunately, just because muslims use the moon as a guide to setting the stat of their calender, the image of a crescent is used to describe them.

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About Me

Here is a short bio I sent to press people covering the Flight 93 memorial debacle. My training is as an economist. I was in the PhD program in economics at Stanford until my research led me more towards moral theory and constitutional law, at which point I dropped the program and started working on my own. I was writing a book on republicanism (the system of liberty under law) for World Ahead Publishing when I discovered that the Flight 93 memorial was going to be a terrorist memorial mosque. World Ahead agreed to first publish my book about this rehijacking of Flight 93 (Crescent of Betrayal, temporarily available for free download at CrescentOfBetrayal.com). This is not my first venture into journalism. Over the years I have been a writer, opinions editor, and advisor for Stanford’s conservative campus newspaper The Stanford Review, and am currently on the Review’s board of directors.